


Seize The Time

by DGCatAniSiri



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Sam Wilson is a Trekkie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 14:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7761865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DGCatAniSiri/pseuds/DGCatAniSiri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a motel somewhere, Sam Wilson is awoken in the middle of the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seize The Time

In a motel out in the middle of nowhere, Sam Wilson was dreaming. In the dream, he was flying, without his wings. He was in the air, flying independent of any technology. He had this dream often, and always savored it. He wished he could do this on his own, much as he loved his wings. The freedom of flight... Sam Wilson was never going to get enough of it. 

Then, abruptly, he was pulled out of the dream, back into being awake. He blinked a few times as he oriented himself back in the world he was in – crappy motel, absence of civilization, continuing what was increasingly seeming like a wild goose chase for an amnesiac assassin who was, at least once, Steve Rogers’s best friend. 

_You made your choices, Sam_ , he thought to himself, not that it was really a choice he regretted. Only when he desperately wanted to remain asleep.

As he rubbed at his eyes, clearing the sleep from them, he looked around. He was alone in the bed, a bit of a surprise on its own, but given that he’d been pulled out of his sleep, he figured that it was part of the cause. The room was tiny, so it wasn’t as if Steve could have gone very far. 

Even as he looked around, the rest of his senses fully engaged and he realized that the TV was... The TV was still off, but there was definitely the sounds of someone watching something, from the bathroom.

Sam pulled himself out of bed and moved to the door. He could hear voices, still muffled by the door. Figuring that if Steve was watching something in there, he was likely doing so for the privacy and not because he was using the facilities, he gently opened the door.

Steve, having flipped the lid down on the toilet to use it as a chair, was engrossed in what was on the screen. Sam doubted he’d even heard Sam enter the room. Now that he’d opened the door, Sam could make out what was being said.

“ _-have been gone for a thousand years. If you remember what we were, and how we lived, then we’ll have found life again._ ”

Sam recognized the quote, and things clicked for him. Steve had found the Star Trek DVDs in his bags early on. The Wilson family were Trekkies to the bone and he’d refused to go on this road trip without his travelling set. Military life had required him to go without and he’d gone nuts until he’d picked up a streaming service. While that was good when there was a weight limit, Sam had always preferred the comfort of being able to have the DVDs on hand, go through them by hand when he wanted to watch something. Granted, if Hydra were out there and after Bucky too, he’d probably ship the DVDs back home right away, but they’d so far not seen a one of Hydra’s supposed many heads.

But he’d made a list of must-see episodes of each series for Steve, figuring that it could pass the time when they were on the road. And apparently, Steve hadn’t wanted to stop where they’d left off before going to bed. ‘The Inner Light’ had been an episode that he hadn’t thought about when he put it on the list, but, now that he realized Steve had reached it, he realized that it might have been something that he should have warned Steve about first. 

“ _Now we live in you. Tell them of us, my darling._ ” Steve reached up and wiped away a tear as the scene cut back to the Enterprise’s bridge, Doctor Crusher telling Commander Riker that Captain Picard was waking up.

“Steve?” Sam asked softly.

Jolting in surprise, Steve looked up to him. “Sam. I... Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He motioned to the DVD player Steve was watching. “I should have realized that episode would... Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m... I’m good.”

Sam didn’t bother with words to express his disbelief.

Steve hit pause and rose from his ‘seat.’ “Okay, so... I couldn’t sleep. So I figured...”

“Yeah. I get that. Are you okay?”

Steve nodded. “I’m... Yeah. Just... wasn’t expecting that.”

Sam felt his therapist instincts trying to kick in, psychoanalyze the man who’d woken up about seven decades out of his time. He silenced those – this wasn’t the time for one of those conversations, and even if it were, Steve needed his boyfriend to talk to him, not a therapist. He motioned to the bed. “C’mon. Let’s not do this in a motel bathroom.” Nothing important should ever happen in a motel bathroom, Sam believed.

The remark got a chuckle from Steve and he took Sam’s advice, walking out of the bathroom and sitting on the bed. At least that was going to be more comfortable. 

“You sure you’re gonna be okay?” Sam asked, sitting next to Steve.

“I missed seventy years. I... I woke up, and I was in an unfamiliar world, almost everyone I knew was gone, and the one who wasn’t... Every time I see her, she forgets, and... and that pain comes back every time. And I’m still here. Still being asked to do the same things. Be the same man.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think I’d have been better off staying in the ice.”

“Hey, don’t talk like that, okay?” Not that Sam hadn’t occasionally wondered the same thing, given the hardships that Steve went through that he didn’t talk about, let alone the ones he couldn’t avoid. But actually hearing Steve say it was always going to trip a red flag in Sam’s mind. “I mean, if you’d been in the ice, you wouldn’t have met me.” Also HYDRA would have been able to enact Project Oversight, but this was a moment about Steve Rogers, not Captain America.

It got a smile out of Steve. “Okay, fair. It just... I still wonder sometimes about where I really fit in this world.”

“You fit with me.” Sam wasn’t going to try and guilt him with a statement of ‘isn’t that enough?’ Steve had more than enough guilt already that he grappled with. The therapist and the boyfriend could agree not to add more to it.

Steve smiled – he could appreciate that much, at least. 

Sam thought some more for a moment. Then he shot a glance back to the DVD player. “Hey, Captain Picard felt completely out of place there in that village. He adapted. You can do that too. You’re here, now. Going back won’t happen.” Even if Tony Stark came up with some kind of time travel device, Sam, with his extensive knowledge of Star Trek, could offer chapter and verse on the issues of paradoxes that could tear the timeline apart. 

“Yeah,” Steve said, a sigh coming out. “It’s just... I do sometimes want to go back. It wasn’t perfect but... it was home.”

That, Sam certainly understood. Especially considering that Steve had tried to make a home with SHIELD, only to learn that Hydra had corrupted it from the earliest days. What little he’d pulled back together, he’d lost again.

“When I got back from Afghanistan, even though everything was familiar, it was like I was seeing it new. Like I knew that it was the same stuff that I’d always seen before, but now... It was unfamiliar. The people, the trees, the... the everything. I had to learn how to... figure out how to live in my own life all over again.”

“You don’t talk about it that often,” Steve said.

Sam shrugged. “Haven’t needed to. I mean I made the effort to reach this point, where it’s not something that I let affect me, but...” He couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, since meeting you, my life hasn’t exactly been normal.”

That earned a laugh from Steve as well. “Yeah, I guess it hasn’t.” He took Sam’s hand, twining their fingers together. “Guess if there’s someone I’m out of my time with, I could definitely do worse than you.” There was a twinkle in his eye, knowing exactly the reaction he’d get with that comment.

And who was Sam to disappoint? “Oh, I only rate as ‘could do worse,’ do I?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. He put on an offended air, though he didn’t let go of Steve’s hand. 

Steve laughed as well, though he gave Sam a serious look. “I’m absolutely grateful to have you.” He kissed Sam, pulling him close. 

It might not be perfect, but it was definitely where they needed to start.

**Author's Note:**

> Sam Wilson is a Trekkie, don't even try to fight me on this.
> 
> And there is no way on Earth "The Inner Light" wouldn't hit Steve Rogers right in the gut every single time.


End file.
